■ Top schools official, bond director discuss progress of several Measure S projects

Last year Benicia voters approved Measure S, a bond for $49.6 million to make improvements to schools in the Benicia Unified School District. Now, point out BUSD Superintendent Charles Young and Bond Director Mitchell Stark, only a few weeks into the school year those improvements already are making a big difference.

The upgrades and improvements have been listed in four categories: modernization and technology; health, safety and security; infrastructure; and student support facilities.

While Stark has been providing regular updates to the BUSD Governing Board and the district’s social media accounts and website have been used to publish information, both Stark and Young have sought other ways to inform the public the information. So they approached The Herald about providing updates on a regular basis.

“We want (the taxpayers) to know that we are being good stewards of their taxpaying dollars,” Young said as he and Stark sat down for an interview Wednesday.

On Aug. 20, Stark explained to school board trustees what had been accomplished over the summer — chiefly a series of long-awaited technology upgrades, including a new phone system for the entire district.

In addition, old fiber optic strands have been replaced, and new Intermediate Distribution Frames (IDF) and switches have been installed at each location. An IDF is a cable rack that connects and manages wiring between a Main Distribution Frame (MDF) and workstations.

“In order to promote and have our technology be prepared for (students), we had to go in and add additional drops, or Internet connections, in every single room. We added a total of four,” Stark said.

The new switches in each IDF cabinet will provide additional bandwidth and higher speed. “Right now we are fed with just one gigabyte of information,” Stark said. “That is all that Comcast … (has) right now. ventually it will go to 10 gigabytes. So actually we are ahead of the game,” he said.

Exterior wireless access points have also been added through the campuses, he said.

“What was happening is, we had a lot of wireless access points in each classroom. When the students would walk down the hallway with their phone, they would pull from those wireless access points, then those wireless access points weren’t able to be used with devices like an iPad or the laptop or whatever,” Stark said.

Now the schools have deployed wireless access points in every classroom and on the exterior of the buildings as well, he said.

“What that has done is create an outside classroom,” Stark said. “Again, we’re trying to be for the future.”

He said the 283,200 feet of new fiber strands installed districtwide equal crossing the Benicia Bridge 32 times. “But then we had new copper” — 3,328,000 feet of new copper lines were installed as well — “which was for all the four additional drops in each classroom … that is like crossing the bridge 370 times,” he said.

Technology is vital but parents want to know their children are safe while at school. In health, safety and security improvements, a new public announcing system, along with new clocks and bells all will run through the new technology backbone. Installation is slated for this fall.

New bleachers have been installed in the Benicia High varsity softball area, replacing the existing wood bleachers. Infrastructure improvements made over the summer included the installation of server rooms — sort of command rooms — for air conditioning, heating and ventilation at Mary Farmar, Robert Semple and Matthew Turner elementary schools.

In one of the biggest planned projects, Mary Farmar Elementary has had new roofing installed across most of its campus, with the exception of the portable buildings.

The new roof is white, giving it good reflectivity; a couple of the buildings’ roofs have additional insulation to help with the slope.

Integral gutters, which had a tendency to leak, have also been removed. Exterior gutters were installed.

“The roof was quite old on Mary Farmar,” Stark said. He said some of the roofing looked like it was from the late 1970s or early 1980s.

Student support facilities have also seen a wide range of improvements.

Former Superintendent Janice Adams had asked Stark to look into library shelving for a book room. New shelving had been quoted at $35,000.

However, “I knew that Los Positas College was redoing their library, and they had temporary shelving. I called them up, and they donated the shelving to us,” Stark said.

“I had to hire a company to remove it from Los Positas College and move it to the high school and assemble it. I had a ‘not to exceed price’ of $15,000, and it ended up costing us $7,200,” Stark said.

“We got $35,000 worth of shelving for $7,200.”

A book room was needed because the district was losing books, some of which cost as much as $200 each. “There was no way to gather them all from the teachers and put them in a central location. They didn’t have an area for that,” Stark said.

He said the move should save the district money from the general fund if it does not have to buy additional books.

The biggest project at the high school over the summer: repainting the exterior.

“That was pretty successful. We have some minor stuff we are touching up, but the majority of it is done,” Stark said.

The main color has been changed from the old salmon pink/orange with brick red trim to a color called “Malibu beige.” The mansard roof has been painted “Benicia blue,” a color familiar to anyone who has strolled under the lamp posts on Benicia’s First Street. On the high school campus’s two-story buildings is an indentation in the stucco — essentially an expansion joint — that has been painted Tiger Cub Yellow.

“The school colors are blue and gold, so it really looks good. It’s only on the two stories, so it is just enough,” Stark said.

In future projects, the design for Benicia Middle School’s fire alarm replacement is about 95 percent complete, Stark said.

Another of the larger planned projects is a new high school stadium, which is in such a preliminary stage it doesn’t even have a timeline yet. Stark has put out a request for proposals to civil engineering firms to do a land survey, because the landscape architect the district eventually hires will need that information to put in the appropriate grades and meet Americans with Disabilities Act requirements.

Another RFP is out for a districtwide electrical assessment. Because more technology is being added to the campuses, officials are beginning to find that they don’t have enough electrical capacity, Stark said.

“This assessment is going to tell us where are we, what do we have right now, now that we are going to add all this capacity where are we going to be, and then add 20 to 25 percent additional to all the sites,” he said.

“In the future we don’t know what is going to happen but let’s prepare for it, let’s be smart. Let’s put it in now.”

“It’s a lot less expensive to put it in now than to do it later.”

Beginning Sept. 9, a new playground structure will be installed at Robert Semple Elementary, and some of the older structures will be removed. “It’s a pretty nice little course for the kids to test their balance, helps build their upper body. They have a couple rock climbing things on it. It’s going to be really neat,” Stark said of the new structure.

Portable buildings will be removed, and new classrooms will be installed at all the sites, as will new asphalt paving. “We are going to have to hire a geotechnical engineer and a specialty firm to do some testing … that is required by the Division of the State Archictect,” Stark said. “So I am putting out an RFP. The firm that gets it will be the same firm we use throughout. You typically get a better price that way.”

Another thing they have started is developing the district’s master plan, necessary to develop and improve the district through long-range planning.

Oakland-based HY Architects has been selected to take on the master plan development process. The first steering committee meeting was Aug. 12.

“The steering committee is comprised of some of the administrative staff, like Charles (Young), myself, (Chief Business Official) Tim (Rahill), a couple board members, an elementary school principal, vice principal from the high school and a vice principal from the middle school, and then our technology (chief) and the person in charge of curriculum,” Stark said.

Site committee meetings will be held at each site to discuss priorities. “It’s a road map, really … to get from point A to point B,” Stark said of the Master Plan.

“We know that we have this $49.6 million worth of bonds. We may not get everything done, but you want to put your priority 1, 2 and 3 projects in a certain order so you’re not putting in something, then coming back a few years later and taking it out,” Stark said.

“You want to be good stewards for the money. Plus you want to provide a place for students to learn in a 21st-century learning environment,” Stark said.

More information on Measure S bond projects can be found at beniciaunified.org/measure-s.